The Great Solar Eclipse of 2017 crossed the continent, from Oregon to South Carolina, and gave millions of people the chance to witness one of the most awe-inspiring events in the natural world.

But you had to be within the "path of totality", a narrow band across the earth's surface several thousand miles long but only about 70 miles wide. Outside that band you would only see a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse.

And there is no such thing as a "partial total eclipse", despite the impression blogs and the news media might give. I honestly think that's why so many people misunderstand the utter beauty of the spectacle; they may have seen a partial eclipse in the past that was total somewhere else, and even though they weren't in the path the news kept gushing about it being a total eclipse, so they assume they must have seen a total eclipse and just didn't find it all that impressive.


Posted by Dan 08/29/2017, revised 09/06/2017

My pro card went into effect January 1, 2016, but for most of the season, nothing really changed. I raced some of the same local events I normally do, this time in a separate Elite category which usually put me in a field of one. Although I got to stand alone on the podium, first in my division, I wasn't even really considered part of the overall stats anymore. I was set off to the side, almost as if I'd done a separate version of the race. They do things differently in the East & Midwest, so those races had cash prizes and a bigger Elite field, consisting of one or two other pro athletes and a handful of Elite Amateurs. But Ironman 70.3 Vineman was my debut into the real world of professional triathlon. The $50,000 prize purse brings in some of the top athletes in the world, and my name was thrown into the middle of a list published in a Triathlete.com article under the intimidating headline, "Impressive Pro Field Headed to 70.3 Vineman."

Not everyone has supported my decision to move up to the Elite category. I've seen plenty of eyebrow raises from those who know all too well that you have to be extraordinarily talented and/or (but mostly and) have access to plenty of financial resources to actually make a living off of racing. The elite license allows access to the most competitive level of racing, but does not guarantee a paycheck as other professional sports do.

But that was never my objective in the first place.

As I considered the various reasons for going pro, winning my annual salary did not even rank in my top ten.

1. Curiosity
2. Greater challenges & tougher competition
3. Preferred start times
4. Discounted race entries
5. Athlete homestays
6. A possibility of meeting Jesse Thomas
7. Street cred
8. To give the women behind me their day on the podium
9. A learning opportunity as a coach
10. Make mom proud

But were those legitimate reasons to throw myself to the wolves? To step into an arena where I was so completely out of my league?

As I considered the reasons for not going pro, I came up with a list of only one:

1. I'm not good enough.

And with that, my mind was made up.

Whether it is an old carryover from my low self esteem pre-teen years, or whether I'm simply the product of a society that encourages assumptions of inadequacy among women and girls, I'm done floating around in self-induced mediocrity.


Posted by Kimberly 07/23/2016

After packing some camping gear on his bicycle and hitching a ride to British Columbia, Nik spent part of this summer riding his bicycle from Canada to California.

Nik still lives in Santa Cruz, where he spends time playing beach volleyball and going to school at Cabrillo College.
Posted by Dan 08/15/2007

I suppose it's been too long since I've updated you all on my life. I don't have anything in particular to focus on, so I guess I'll do another bullet-point-posting... those seem to be the most reader-friendly anyway. I've really settled into life here, and I've truly been having an incredible time! I don't feel like any minute has gone by that hasn't been spent exactly the way it was meant to be spent. The problem is... most of my minutes apparently weren't meant to be spent on schoolwork. Well, let me rephrase that: The "problem" is most of my minutes weren't meant to be spent on schoolwork.

Anyway, yeah. Here's a summary of what my minutes were meant to be spent on:

• sitting in the sun or in the grass under leafy trees on campus, listening to great music on my headphones or chatting/ playing cards/ generally relaxing with friends that wander by; a lot of my minutes were meant to be spent doing exactly this... and it never gets old!
  
  
• group dinners on Sundays; for the past 3 Sundays, my roommates and I have gotten group dinners together, usually around 10-12 people. So far, we've had a sushi dinner night, a breakfast-for-dinner night (pancakes, eggs, and bacon all done outside on our flat-top BBQ!), and finger-food night. It's always good fun.
  
  
• playing beach volleyball on Friday nights with my 4's team, the Flogging Mollies (my roommate/teammate Scott was wearing a Flogging Mollies shirt when we had to submit our team name); we're really starting to come together as a team, and it's a lot of fun - I look forward to it all week.
  
  
• playing ultimate frisbee; my Monday-night team, Second Skin, is also really coming together to play well together (when we had to choose team colors, we chose 'skins,' which ended up working out really nicely, 'cause even at night, it's still really hot here). I still don't really know the rules, but I run and I throw and I catch, and it seems to working out alright. I'm still getting used to it being a non-contact sport, though. Apparently you're not supposed to body-check your defender in this game.
  
  
• brewing beer. Scott and I got fed up with high prices for bad beer, so we started making our own. Our first batch won't be ready for another 2 weeks, but I'm excited to be able to have quality beer around again! Well, we'll see how quality the beer-by-beginners actually is. Dave! Neil! What am I going to do without your expertise??
  
  
• laughing at silly things like the fact that the word "expertise" looks like something you do to be expertly in shape.
  
  
• laying out in my hammock on the back patio, enjoying the minutes that were definitely not meant to be spent doing schoolwork.
  
  
• drinking all the PG Tips tea that Mom and Dad sent me. At the rate I'm going, I'm actually going to drink all of that tea in the time I'm here, easy! (they sent me 2 boxes of 80 bags) Many of my minutes are actually spent brushing my teeth, too, for fear of the stains resulting from so much black tea intake.
  
  
• going on cool field trips for my Indigenous Australians class. A local Aboriginal elder named Rusty took us out for a day all around the area, sharing with us some of the incredible vast sea of knowledge they have about the land. It was really cool to learn about the uses/dangers of any plant around us, to learn how to read animal tracks (type of animal, gender, age, purpose of their movement... so much to be interpreted from such a seemingly simple thing!), to hear stories of tradition, myth, origin, culture, to visit a burial ground where I could feel the presence of generations and generations of Aboriginal culture, to see cave paintings right in front of my eyes that were painted there by a hand that moved across the rock thousands of years ago... yeah. There were some pretty cool minutes spent doing this stuff.
  
  
• watching Australia's "Biggest Loser" with all the roommates. This is the time that we all take a break from whatever we're doing (or not doing, in my case), and come together in the living room to watch people lose weight while we scarf down pizza or ice cream or cookies.
  
  
• ...then there's a couple minutes here and there where I throw an assignment together. Those minutes usually come immediately before the minutes that were meant to be spent handing in said assignment.
  
  

All in all, it's a glorious life. A girl can get used to this.

Me with Rusty, a local Aboriginal elder. I would love to have 5% of the knowledge that he has about the land!

Posted by Whitney 04/23/2008, revised 04/23/2008